Arizona State University professor Heni Ben Amor believes human-robot collaboration is important and wants to help robots better understand and respond to human behavior. Human skill is key for many tasks, but other tasks would benefit from the strength and agility of robots, according to Ben Amor. “To ensure safe interaction, autonomous robots need to include movements and actions of human partners into their decision-making process,” he says. Ben Amor wants to investigate bi-manual grasping and manipulation in an effort to increase robots’ dexterity to a level that matches the ability of humans using two hands and arms. He also is intrigued by machine learning involving robots and the learning capabilities of biological systems. Ben Amor wants to determine if robots can learn to solve tasks on their own, by employing a human-like trial-and-error strategy to acquire new motor skills. He also says he is particularly fascinated with the idea of having a robot read the manual for IKEA furniture and program itself to do the assembly.